Reviewed by Sam Unsted
Stars Brittany Snow, Idris Elba, Johnathan Schaech,
Scott Porter, Jessica Stroup, Dana Davis, Ming Wen,
Collins Pennie, Kelly Blatz
Written by JS Cardone
Certification UK 15 | US PG-13
Runtime 88 minutes
Directed by Nelson McCormick
A remake of a pretty awful Jamie Lee Curtis slasher from the 1980s, Prom Night tells the tale of Donna Keppel (Snow) whose family is brutally slain by a teacher (Schaech) who becomes obsessed with her. He is caught and sent to a maximum security facility but — and this will shock you — he escapes!! Oh, no!!! So, then he decides to come back and find Donna, coinciding this escape and decision with Donna’s prom. Hard-bitten Detective Winn (Elba) was there at the first incident however and he will commit his night to stopping this killer from getting to Donna.
Hmm ... doesn’t sound all that interesting does it? And it’s not. It’s pretty stupefyingly boring in places. The scares in the film are almost non-existent with first-time director Nelson McCormick deciding to use the ol’ closing-of-the-bathroom-cabinet-to-see-person-in-mirror for almost half the jumps he goes for. The absolute key problem with the film is the killer. He’s supposed to be this obsessed, lonely, yet normal guy, a teacher. Yet, when he comes back on this spree, he’s a not-at-all-discerning killer who essentially seems to believe that killing everyone around this girl will make her come to him. Certainly this is deranged thinking but he loses impact because he’s played as this almost indestructible, assassin-like killer. He’s so powerful and close-to-invincible that you lose any real fright because he’s not a real person anymore. That, and the director takes so long and puts in so many dummy-scares to every scene that by the time he actually does attack, you’re just begging for the scene to end.
So why two stars? Why not take away all stars. Well, it’s not all that offensive. Hostel 2, that’s offensively bad. This is just a production-line horror with an okay cast that manages to deliver okay results with nothing to work from. Elba, so immense as Stringer Bell in The Wire (the greatest television show ever made) does a nice job as Winn while Snow works in making her character so genuinely sweet that you really want her to escape this maniac. Also, although I can’t discuss it, the ending is pretty neatly done and honestly quite darn bleak — especially for Hollywood.
Unfortunately, a terrible script underserves everything, so this is never quite elevated into the realm of being enjoyable. It’s totally inoffensive, even down to a complete lack of blood despite frenzied attacking, and might even make a solid date movie for non-discerning film fans. But for others, this is a half-cooked effort that will make enough money to bring more of its kin — and that’s the truly sad part.